With the General Assembly in session and the Supreme Court in term, each week brings a flood of interesting news. The top story this week was probably the Court's decision in Michigan v. Bryant, a Confrontation Clause case in which the Court held that a mortally wounded shooting victim's statements to police about the "identification and description of the shooter and the location of the shooting were not testimonial" because they were made in connection with an ongoing emergency. I'm hoping to entice Jessie Smith into a writing a post dissecting the case. For now, I'll note that one interesting facet of the decision is that Justices Scalia and Ginsburg were the two dissenters -- not a combination you see every day. In other news: 1. Lawyers with a federal practice will be interested in the Court's decision in Pepper v. United States, in which the Court held that "[w]hen a defendant’s sentence has been set aside on appeal, a district court at resentencing may consider evidence of the defendant’s postsentencing rehabilitation" in determining the appropriate sentence. 2. The Court also heard oral argument in another Confrontation Clause case, Bullcoming v. New Mexico. One view of the oral argument is presented here. The case concerns a subject that has been covered extensively on this blog -- whether and when the state can use a substitute analyst to testify about lab work. The Court's decision could significantly impact the law in that area, though several commentators have read the tea leaves to [...]
Faculty Coordinators
